Our Weekly Look at Some Small Freight Related Items You May Have Missed

UK – Intermodal routes saw another cargo option open this week as Maritime Transport introduced its tenth rail freight service to date when it commenced operations between DP World London Gateway on the banks of the River Thames, and its terminal at East Midlands Gateway, Derby. The service operates 5 days per week with a weekly capacity of up to 320 containers.

UK – Every year, hundreds of fleet drivers and managers take part in Road Safety Week run by Brake, the road safety charity and supported by the Department for Transport and headline sponsors DHL and Specsavers. Taking place from 16 – 22 November 2020, Road Safety Week is the perfect opportunity for fleet organisations to demonstrate their commitment to road safety to staff, customers, and local communities.

This year’s theme is NO NEED TO SPEED, a subject chosen following the findings in a Brake survey that only a quarter of people believe that vehicles travel at safe speeds on the street where they live. Everyone with a passion for road safety is invited to register HERE to get a free action pack which includes items from videos and factsheets, new driver guidance on speed and support to improve road safety at work etc.

UK – Articulated fork lift trucks have become an essential weapon for many in the fight to monopolise available space within the warehouse with the use of narrow aisle, high lift racking systems. Now Yorkshire-based logistics specialist Expect Distribution has added further Flexi articulated lift trucks to the already extensive fleet of flexible trucks that are in operation across its multi-user warehouse facilities in Halifax and Bradford.

The latest additions are again from the range designed and built by Narrow Aisle Ltd in Tipton, West Midlands, specifically the Flexi ACiON trucks which feature digital electric motor technology that allows all independent drive, hydraulic and power-steering motor functions to be controlled digitally. The latest models have an increased battery range of 15% with collaborative robotic technology. This allows features such as the operator’s vision camera, height selection system and aisle sensing technology to be integrated without the need for hard-wired relays.

AUSTRALIA – Lloyd’s Register (LR) has been appointed as the classification society for Australia’s Hunter Class Frigate Program, the largest surface ship project in the nation’s defence history. Through Hunter, BAE Systems Australia’s shipbuilding business, ASC Shipbuilding, will deliver nine anti-submarine warfare frigates to the Royal Australian Navy. The announcement follows the opening of LR’s Naval Liaison Office in Sydney in April 2020 aimed at gaining just such projects.

ASC recently awarded LR the contract to provide tailored Naval Classification and Certification Services for the Hunter program’s prototyping phase, on track to cut steel in December. These services will be delivered by the LR Australia team, to ensure that the Hunter program meets Naval Classification and Certification requirements. The team will be co-located with ASC Shipbuilding employees at the state-of-the-art shipyard at Osborne, in South Australia.

NORWAY – Optimarin has received a revised IMO G8 certificate for ballast water treatment (BWT) technology. The news ensures complete global compliance for a growing customer base, with the very latest orders received from Arriva Shipping, for its fleet of advanced dry bulk vessels, and Østensjø Rederi, for four newbuilds currently under construction at Spain’s Gondan shipyard. A total of around 1,000 Optimarin Ballast Systems (OBS) have now been sold, of which 700 are already installed. The majority of systems currently being ordered are for retrofitting.

NORWAY – Jotun has launched a range of antifouling coatings to succeed its SeaQuantum S-line offering tailor-made fouling protection. The company claims the silyl methacrylate-based SeaQuantum III series, with products tailored for customer specific vessel operational profiles, sets a new industry standard, keeping biofouling under control to deliver an average speed loss performance of just 2% over a 60-month period.

This translates to compelling owner benefits in terms of operational efficiency, environmental protection and potential huge fuel savings, The company says $500,000 per year on average for a 3,000 TEU feeder container ship, with the gains extending with larger vessels and fuel price hikes. There are three products in the range and all feature microZone™, a new technology that prolongs the time between the activation of coating biocides and their dispersal, keeping them closer to the hull longer and thus creating a protective shield against fouling.

FINLAND – SOUTH KOREA – Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) shipyard has ordered the complete Wärtsilä cargo handling system design for two new 98,000 m³ Very Large Ethane Carriers (VLECs) currently under construction, with an option for a third vessel. The order replicates a similar order last year and Wärtsilä has also previously supplied HHI with numerous LPG, LEG and LNG cargo handling solutions.

The tailor made cargo handling system will comprise a highly efficient multi-cargo reliquefaction system and a unique ethane fuel supply system. The entire system will be connected to Wärtsilä’s in house-developed remote monitoring system, Operim, for efficient operational optimisation.

GERMANY – The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML and Dachser are extending their collaboration in the DACHSER Enterprise Lab for a further three years. Their partnership will continue to focus on research and development projects with practical application benefits for the Dachser network. These include digital technologies such as data science and artificial intelligence (AI), real-time locating systems (RTLS), 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, and adaptive warehouse systems.

In the DACHSER Enterprise Lab, Dachser logistics experts and scientists from Fraunhofer IML work in mixed lab teams on various research and development assignments. The partnership between the logistics service provider and the research institute was launched in October 2017 and will now run until October 2023.

SWEDEN – Handheld, the group which manufactures computer equipment designed to survive such harsh environments as shipping warehouses and rail yards, has recently moved to a bespoke warehouse conversion of an historic decommissioned foundry with a prime lakefront position in Lidköping.

Handheld’s lineup of rugged tablets and PDAs is specifically developed for field workers in industries such as geomatics, logistics, forestry, public transportation, utilities, construction, maintenance, mining, military and security, and the company says the change fits well in a year that began with office expansions in Germany and in the US.

Photo: Maritime Transport has opened its tenth UK based intermodal service this week.